LIFE may give for love to death | |
| Little; what are life’s gifts worth | |
| To the dead wrapt round with earth | |
| Yet from lips of living breath | |
| Sighs or words we are fain to give, | 5 |
| All that yet, while yet we live, | |
| Life may give for love to death. | |
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| Dead so long before his day, | |
| Passed out of the Italian sun | |
| To the dark where all is done, | 10 |
| Fallen upon the verge of May, | |
| Here at life’s and April’s end | |
| How should song salute my friend | |
| Dead so long before his day? | |
| |
| Not a kindlier life or sweeter | 15 |
| Time, that lights and quenches men, | |
| Now may quench or light again, | |
| Mingling with the mystic metre | |
| Woven of all men’s lives with his | |
| Not a clearer note that this, | 20 |
| Not a kindlier life or sweeter. | |
| |
| In this heavenliest part of earth | |
| He that living loved the light, | |
| Light and song, may rest aright. | |
| One in death if strange in birth, | 25 |
| With the deathless dead that make | |
| Life the lovelier for their sake | |
| In this heavenliest part of earth. | |
| |
| Light, and song, and sleep at last— | |
| Struggling hands and suppliant knees | 30 |
| Get no goodlier gift than these. | |
| Song that holds remembrance fast, | |
| Light that lightens death, attend | |
| Round their graves who have to friend | |
| Light and song, and sleep at last. | 35 |
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